This episode of Late Night Debut features Monstress, Lysley Tenorio’s collection of short stories published by Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins. Chang-rae Lee calls Monstress “the debut of an electric literary talent. Brilliantly quirky, often moving, always gorgeously told, these are tales of bighearted misfits who yearn for their authentic selves with extraordinary passion and grace.”

Guest co-hosts Sam Ross and Evan P. Schneider take a close look at the final story in the collection, “L’amour, CA,” examining the various forms identity takes and discussing ideas about family, the role yearning plays in Monstress, and age and time passing.

Lysley Tenorio ’s stories have appeared in The Atlantic, Zoetrope: All-Story,Ploughshares, Manoa, and The Best New American Voices and The Pushcart Prize anthologies. A winner of the Whiting Writer’s Award and a former Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, he has received fellowships from the University of Wisconsin, Phillips Exeter Academy, Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Born in the Philippines, he currently lives in San Francisco and is an associate professor at Saint Mary’s College of California.

About our co-hosts:

Sam Ross was born in Indiana and lives in Manhattan. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Tin House, Hunger Mountain, Bat City Review, and Guernica, and his translations are scheduled to appear in Diwan Ifrikiya: The University of California Book of North African Literature andCircumference magazine. He has taught in the New York City public school system, the Putney School Summer Programs, and is a Teaching Fellow at Columbia University.

Evan P. Schneider is the author of the novel A Simple Machine, Like the Lever (Propeller Books, 2011) and the founding editor of Boneshaker: A Bicycling Almanac (Wolverine Farm Publishing). His writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The Believer, The Normal School, Matter,False, and Propeller Quarterly, as well as on the McSweeney’s website. Born in New Mexico and raised in Colorado, Evan now lives in Portland, Oregon, where he works at Literary Arts.